Meta Incognita: Missive II

Alia Syed, Meta Incognita: Missive II, 2019, HD Video, 53 minutes (excerpt above)
[for further examples of this work please visit https://lux.org.uk/work/meta-incognita-missive-ii]

Set in the near future, Meta Incognita: Missive II is built around the audio log of a renegade female captain of a ship smuggling an illegal commodity from the Artic to England via the North West Passage. Her journey is based on the exploits of the Elizabethan privateer turned explorer Martin Frobisher who to make up for his failure to find the North West Passage embarked on a further voyage to bring his Queen back vast quantities of gold, only to discover on his arrival in Dartford that he had in fact brought back Iron Pyrite or ‘Fool’s Gold’.

The imagery of the film consists of two shots, sunset and sunrise, filmed off the Essex coast at the mouth of the Thames, on a Public Right of Way called the Broomway, which was until the 1930s, the only way onto Foulness Island from the mainland. 

Recorded in real time, each 20 minute shot documents tidal currents, wind patterns and the setting and rising of the sun, within the backdrop of public information bulletins derived from the Twitter account of the international arms manufacturer QinetiQ. QinetiQ leases the land from the Ministry of Defence and the entire area is a military testing ground, but what makes it unique apart from the land and ecosystem itself, is that a small community of people, many of whose ancestors have farmed the land for centuries, still inhabit it.  

The island is one of the most rigidly controlled and regulated zones in the country, this refusal to allow access or development also means it remains a very open and wild space. In the film this dichotomy has evolved to form the basis of a dystopian future; namely that the only open (wild) spaces that we will have in the future will be those controlled by privatised military companies.  

The land, its politics, and the way in which the communities living on and around the island have normalised this surreal situation is very compelling, and a large portion of the narration is derived from the language and phrases recorded during interviews carried out with local inhabitants. The formal device of a ships log is culled in part from the actual log of The MV Nunavik, which in 2014 successfully completed a round trip from Canada's Deception Bay through the North West Passage without an escort from icebreakers, to the port of Bayuquan in China. 

The natural rhythms of the location serve as a nexus for observations in sound and writing bringing together the traces of wind, water, and light; stories excavated from strata of lands plundered, now gasping for respite.

The film takes its name from Meta Incognita or ‘unknown limit’, a term coined by Elizabeth I of England in her incessant drive to increase her empire and riches, it also the name given to a peninsula in the Qikiqtaaluk Region of North West Canada by Martin Frobisher when he claimed the land for The Crown.

Exhibitions
2019 - 2020 Migrating Worlds: The Art of the Moving Image in Britain, Yale Centre for British Art  
2019 Meta Incognita Talwar Gallery, New York, USA

Reviews
Artforum International